[Delphinus]

When I get some time I'll check out that link, thanks.

I have tried phosphate sponges, out of desperation. It's an only temporary stop gap measure though. It's also a rather expensive proposition. I'm not sure if it's the food or the source water where it's coming from (at one time I was using RO, but gave up on it because it's a lot of work to haul up buckets of RO from the basement). Right now it's so bad that I just want to throw out all the plants, all the substrate and rocks and driftwood and start over from first principles. Run the tank empty with just the two cannister filters (I run both a Rena and a Eheim on this setup) with bleach for a couple weeks before reintroducing the fish.

I recently swapped out my older lights (tank is lit by 2x65) with Jebo daylights and although I don't want to blame the lights, it just seems like it went from bad to worse at that point (although it could just be other factors as well).

I dunno, maybe next time you're in the south (I live in Evergreen) I could ask you to pop by and take a look and see if you can offer any suggestions, I'm seriously at the end of my knowledge as to what to do. I want to enjoy the fish, I'm tired of looking at the tank and thinking "Man what a sludge factory". My nephew has a FW tank with a bunch of tetras and whatnot, and it's ten times the nicer tank, and it's just one of those Eclipse package deals with a "buncha fish" and coloured gravel and a castle decoration sort of thing.